


The Blackbird’s Song

by FinAmour



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff, Love, M/M, Retirementlock, Soulmates, Young Sherlock, soft bois
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-25 06:12:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17719649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinAmour/pseuds/FinAmour
Summary: Sherlock loves everything about John, even when John is short-tempered or demanding. And John loves everything about Sherlock, even when he’s stubborn or ill-mannered.John loves Sherlock when he examines dead things, and he loves Sherlock when he plays the violin. John loves Sherlock when the two of them go to museum exhibitions about serial killers, and he loves Sherlock while they kiss beneath the Perseid meteor shower.





	The Blackbird’s Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gabemu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gabemu/gifts).



> This story was originally written for a collection called “FictoberLock.” I loved it so much that I decided to publish it separately as well. Hope you enjoy ❤️

Sherlock Holmes is only six years old when he begins to study dead things. He does it because he wants to help save the lives of blackbirds.

One day while playing outside in the garden, he finds one—its wings are crossed over its completely still body, and it has stopped singing. Sherlock wants to know _why_ it has stopped singing, and he decides to figure it out, so no other blackbirds will lose their own song as well.

He scoops it up with his tiny hands and carefully folds it into his shirt, and he brings it into his house to get a closer look.

He bounds inside with a huge smile on his face—this is going to be _so much fun._ He takes a seat at his father’s desk, because he knows, based on what his father has always said, that this is the place work gets done.

He sets the bird on his father’s desk, carefully taking out a pair of scissors, and he begins to thoroughly dissect it.

Mummy calls from the corridor that lunch is ready, and Sherlock calls back that he’s going to have to skip lunch today, because he’s performing an autopsy. Mummy comes upstairs to see what Sherlock has gotten into, and upon entering, she lets out a blood-curdling scream.

She makes Sherlock throw the bird back outside immediately, shower for an extensive amount of time, and makes a colourful joke about finding him a therapist.

After that, whenever Sherlock performs an autopsy, he simply steals his father’s scissors and goes outside where he won’t be interrupted.

***

When Sherlock is in his sixth year of primary, he discovers his fascination with astronomy. He memorises every constellation in the Milky Way galaxy (Canis Major is his favourite); he devours book after book about black holes and supernovas; and he yearns to explore each planet within the solar system.

He begs his parents to buy him a telescope so that he can study the night sky, and when they do, there is little else he wants to talk about.

“Normally,” he says to a classmate over lunch. “We consider ourselves to be in the orbit of the sun. However, the sun’s outer atmosphere technically expands past our planet, so one could say that we actually live _inside_ the sun.”

His classmate rolls her eyes and moves herself to another table.

A few days later, Sherlock is put into time out for making four of his classmates cry. But he had thought it incredibly important to announce to his entire class that there is a supermassive black hole headed towards Earth at 110 kilometres per second, and that if they were to come too close, the gravitational pull would stretch each of their bodies out, long and thin, like spaghetti. If they weren’t first incinerated by a wall of fire. Obviously.

When the Perseid meteor shower peaks that year, Sherlock begs Mycroft to watch it with him. Mycroft tells Sherlock that he’s too busy and has more important things to do than look up at a bunch of ridiculous falling stars.

The night is covered in thick clouds, and even with his telescope, Sherlock isn’t able to see a single meteor.

The following morning, he throws his telescope into the pond behind their house, and he deletes everything about the solar system from his memory.

***

When Sherlock is fifteen, he fancies a boy named Victor.

Victor plays cricket, and has light, wavy hair and blue eyes, and fair skin and a voice like honey—and when he smiles, Sherlock can’t look away for anything.

Sherlock stares at Victor each day from the back of the classroom as the boy laughs and talks lightheartedly with other students. He writes love letters to Victor that he never gives him, and he composes songs for him on the violin—songs that he has never played outside the walls of his bedroom.

The day Victor asks Sherlock if he can come over to his house to study, he thinks he may be living in a dream. Sherlock rushes home from school, does his hair and puts on his most expensive shirt. He makes tea and snacks and practices his violin until the doorbell rings.

The two study for an hour and a half, and Victor smiles that gorgeous smile at Sherlock and tells him they ought to study together more often. Sherlock thinks that Victor’s version of studying is rather odd, because he seems to simply be copying the answers Sherlock has written down, but when Victor smiles at him like that, he doesn’t dare question it.

It’s then that Victor seems to notice Sherlock’s violin sitting innocuously in the corner of his room. He frowns and asks Sherlock if he plays, and Sherlock proudly tells him yes, and he asks Victor  if he would like to hear him.

Victor sneers and tells him that if he’d wanted to hear someone play the violin, he’d stand on a corner near Trafalgar Square and wave a five-pound note in the air. He then asks Sherlock what his answer is for problem twenty-four.

Sherlock wilts, his chest burning, and he asks Victor to leave. That evening, he sets his love letters aflame, and he composes a new melody on his violin—this one much more melancholy than the rest.

***

During Sherlock’s first year of university, his father buys him two tickets to see an exhibition on Jack the Ripper at the Museum of London. He tells him he thought it seemed like something he’d enjoy, and that he can bring a friend with him if he likes.

Sherlock doesn’t have friends.

When Sherlock asks his father to join him, he simply chuckles and tells him that serial killers aren’t particularly his idea of fun.

***

When Sherlock is twenty-three and in his final year of graduate school, he begins solving murders with New Scotland Yard as a hobby.

It’s much more fun than partying or video games or photography or all of the things his peers seem to be interested in. And the Yard can’t seem to figure anything out on their own, anyway.

But Sherlock needs a partner—someone to take notes when he goes deep into his Mind Palace; someone to communicate with humans in a way that Sherlock can’t seem to do. Someone to help keep Sherlock grounded when he’s on a six-hour stakeout, or when he’s ruminating over the death of a very young person he hasn’t solved, and he hasn’t slept for three days straight.

So Sherlock creates an ad, and posts it on a local website. _Wanted: Partner in crime-solving._

He gets seven email replies. Three of them invite Sherlock to partake in the exchange of explicit photographs. One offers to sell him life insurance. The other three ask him how much the job pays. Sherlock lets them know that it’s only for fun, but nobody takes him up on the offer.

So he continues to do it alone, because alone is what he has.

***

When he is thirty-two years old, Sherlock has built a career out of solving crimes, and he’s very, very good at it.

When Sherlock meets John Watson, he becomes even better.

John agrees to move in with Sherlock first, and he agrees to solve a crime with him second, and those are two things that nobody has ever agreed to do.

Furthermore, John does both things with an unprecedented enthusiasm, and they laugh and they laugh as they chase a serial killer through London. And John doesn’t tell Sherlock that he is strange at all—John calls him extraordinary, in fact.

And then John saves him, and Sherlock knows without a doubt that he has met someone very, very important.

They stay up far too late talking and drinking and eating Chinese food and exchanging lingering glances, and it’s absolutely the best night of Sherlock’s life.

***

John is at Sherlock’s side unfailingly and unquestioningly for many cases after that. Sherlock never even has to ask. Because John Watson apparently thinks solving crimes is just as fun as Sherlock does—he even decides to write about it.

“John,” Sherlock remarks one evening after solving the Maloney triple homicide. “You’re a doctor.”

John frowns at him. “Had you forgotten?”

“What I mean is—you’ve got a career, and a _good_ one—why do you choose to involve yourself in what I do? It’s dangerous, and time-consuming, and it doesn’t even pay well.”

John purses his lips together in thought. “I suppose I do it because it makes me happy. And I do it because it makes you happy, as well.”

Sherlock can’t hold back the smile forming on his lips. “Because it makes _me_ happy?” Nobody had ever cared much about _that._

“Absolutely,” John says with a grin. “Seeing you in action is thrilling, and now that I’ve had a taste of it, I can’t imagine my life any other way.”

***

When Sherlock is thirty-nine years old, John buys him a telescope for his birthday.

“I know I tease you constantly for knowing nothing about the solar system,” John says, his blue eyes sparkling. “So I figured—maybe you could spend some time staring at the night sky, and the beautiful stars, and learn a thing or two.”

Sherlock doesn’t even notice the tears springing up in his eyes until a look of panic appears on John’s face.

“If you don’t like it, I can take it back,” John says immediately. “Don’t worry about it.”

“That’s not—“ Sherlock swallows. “It’s lovely, John. It reminds me of one I had as a young boy, one I’d forgotten all about until now.”

John steps forward, closing the space between the two of them, and he tilts his head upwards to meet Sherlock’s eyes. “So you like it, then?” he asks, his expression so full of concern it makes Sherlock’s stomach flip.

Sherlock likes it very much. He loves it, in fact.

He loves John. He tells him.

And then John takes Sherlock’s head into his hands and he kisses him, and that’s how Sherlock learns that John loves him, as well.

***

Sherlock and John grow old together.

Sherlock loves everything about John, even when John is short-tempered or demanding. And John loves everything about Sherlock, even when he’s stubborn or ill-mannered.

John loves Sherlock when he examines dead things, and he loves Sherlock when he plays the violin. John loves Sherlock when the two of them go to museum exhibitions about serial killers, and he loves Sherlock while they kiss beneath the Perseid meteor shower.

***

When Sherlock is sixty years old, he retires—and John retires, too—and they make plans to relocate to a small cottage in Sussex.

There are beehives there. Sherlock is enamoured by the thought of bees, and studying them and cataloguing them and closely following their lives.

And when he asks John how he feels about it, John says it sounds like fun, but he’d be alright with anything that makes Sherlock happy.

 _“You_ make me happy, you know,” Sherlock murmurs into the soft grey hair on John’s head. “I love you more than I love bees, or murderers, or supernovas, or violins, or dead bodies, and I love all of those things quite a lot.” He dusts a kiss onto John’s temple and pulls him closer. “John Watson, you are my absolute favourite thing.”

John laughs into the warm skin of Sherlock’s clavicle. “Yes, I know. Sherlock, you’re my favourite thing, as well. You’re the cleverest and kindest and most beautiful human being I’ve ever met in my entire life.” John tilts his head back to kiss Sherlock on his mouth, and Sherlock wonders to himself how he’d ever gotten quite so lucky.


End file.
